Our problem is that we have become so accustomed in our old life to the self-activity of the self, that we carry it over to the new life, hardly noticing that we do so. As we repeatedly say, the new man is actually Christ in us, we are merely the hidden filaments through which His light shines out, the cup which holds the water; as nearly as possible we don’t count. We are ourselves conscious of this as we look in the face of our Beloved. We realize and recognize HIM as our life. Seeing Him, we just don’t see ourselves. In our inner consciousness He is the life of our lives. But at the same time, we are immersed, of necessity, in worldly activities which demand every form of self-activity, and constantly, equally of necessity, divert us from conscious Christ-reliance. Our problem is how to live, naturally and freely, normal lives which are yet at their roots Christ living in and through us, even when for many of our waking hours our direct attention is centred on mundane affairs; and how to recognize sensitively and quickly when the pressure or sudden impact of things is pulling us off-centre on to self-reliance. It is what the writer to the Hebrews called “the dividing asunder of soul and spirit”.